Who Will Be The Next Vice President? How The Numbers Are Stacked Up Ahead Of The Election
The contenders are CP Radhakrishnan, backed by the ruling NDA and B Sudershan Reddy, backed by the Opposition INDIA bloc.
The election for the Vice President of India is scheduled on Tuesday, Sept. 9, following the surprise resignation of then sitting V-P Jagdeep Dhankhar in July.
The contenders are CP Radhakrishnan, backed by the ruling National Democratic Alliance and Justice (retired) B Sudershan Reddy, backed by the Opposition INDIA bloc. The election will be decided by the votes of Members of Parliament from both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
Radhakrishnan is a BJP veteran from Tamil Nadu and the Governor of Maharashtra, whereas Reddy is a former Supreme Court judge who hails from Telangana and is known for key judgements, including the one declaring Salwa Judum, a group of trained tribal youth deployed as special police officers to take on Naxalites, as illegal and unconstitutional.
Numbers Game For V-P Elections 2025
The electoral college for the vice presidential election comprises a total of 788 members: 245 from the Rajya Sabha and 543 from the Lok Sabha.
The 12 nominated members of the Rajya Sabha are also eligible to vote in the election. The present strength of the electoral college is 781 as six seats are vacant in the Rajya Sabha and one in the Lok Sabha. This puts the majority mark at 391.
NDA has 425 MPs
Opposition camp has the backing of 324.
Among the political parties that are not part of the ruling or the opposition camps, the YSRCP, with 11 members in Parliament, has decided to support the NDA nominee, while the BRS and the BJD have decided to abstain from voting in the election.
On paper, the NDA has a total of 425 MPs and are comfortably ahead of the majority mark, making Radhakrishnan a winner.
The INDIA bloc's candidate Sudershan Reddy is projected to get around 324 votes, backed by Opposition parties like Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, DMK and others. Asaduddin Owaisi, the lone MP of the AIMIM, has also announced his support to Reddy despite not being part of the INDIA bloc.
Notably, the projected numbers are only based on political party's electoral strength, and the actual numbers may differ in case of abstentions and potential cross-voting.
Who Are Abstaining From Voting
BRS Working President K T Rama Rao said his party would abstain from the Vice Presidential election as an expression of 'anguish' felt by Telangana's farmers due to the shortage of urea in the state.
Odisha's principal opposition party, Biju Janata Dal announced that its MPs will also abstain from voting. The party, headed by former chief minister Naveen Patnaik, said it took the decision as part of its policy of 'maintaining an equal distance' from both the BJP-led NDA and Congress-led INDIA bloc at the national level.
How is The Vice-President Elected?
Members of both Houses of Parliament will cast their votes in the Parliament House between 10 AM and 5 PM on Tuesday. Counting votes will begin at 6 PM, and the results will be announced late evening.
Like the Rajya Sabha elections, voting and counting are held on the same day in the election to the office of the vice president. Members of Parliament are not bound by party whips to vote in the vice presidential election, which takes place under a secret ballot system.
